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4 Must-Know Social CS Rules

You can never know too much about engaging with customers on social media. Luckily, Ekaterina Walter has given us some tips we need to know at Forbes.com. You can read some here, but we encourage you to click on the original article to see the full details.

Source: Aberdeen Group, by way of Forbes

1. Know Your (Un)happy Customers

Social media used to be a channel of last resorts – when people were so fed up that they would turn to the web to vent. Now, social is one of the first touchpoints for the progressive brands. Most customers are engaging on your brand’s social media channels before they even pick up the phone. This behavior presents brands with the opportunity to resolve issues before they escalate. But the first step is being aware of these conversations.

Whatever technology you use, make sure you have access to well-organized monitoring dashboards. Monitoring dashboards are the most foundational requirement for brands managing inbound conversations across multiple accounts. Whether your purpose is customer service or marketing, there is no easier way to see what’s being said across multiple channels. The dashboards aggregate your brand mentions at a macro-level view. #NoTweetLeftBehind

2. Communicate Well

It’s imperative that your customer service team, or any team engaging with customers online in a public way for that matter, receives consistent training on how to communicate externally on behalf of your brand.

So, ask yourself:

Is customer service a part of your social media playbook? Conversely, is there a social media section of your customer service handbook and related training materials?

Are there tests in place to ensure that individuals meet a basic criteria of understanding in terms of communication before they are given access to social media as part of their jobs?

Is there one brand voice consistent across every location, team, and department at your company?

3. Streamline and Personalize Your Engagement

With thousands, sometimes millions, messages coming through every day, you need to streamline communications. To do so, enable the following functionalities in your social media management platform:

Customizable approval paths: Depending on the industry, company, and sensitivity of the message, multiple stakeholders might be involved in the message approval. Your social media platform should have approval paths that can be customized to fit your company’s specific needs. At the same time, it should be scalable enough to include multiple departments, so that all approvals can take place in one environment.

Message history: This feature allows you to be aware of past conversations an individual has had with your brand. So if “John Doe” reaches out to you on Twitter, you’ll also be able to see how he’s interacted with your brand before, including other social channels. This will enable you to provide a more personalized response.

4. Evaluate and Optimize in Real-Time

Like all initiatives, the success of your social customer care program depends heavily on your ability to sustain and improve it. There are certain capabilities that you’ll need for optimization.

SLA reporting dashboard: How many customer care cases are being resolved? How long does it take for your team to reply? Do your reply rates improve over time? You need SLA dashboards to see your progress in resolving customer problems/inquiries.

Audit trail: An audit trail is necessary for a couple reasons. It allows you to see which agents replied to what, and how they’re replying, which you can use to uncover learning opportunities. Audit trails also provide documentation of your social interactions. Even if a message is deleted on the native channel, your audit trail will store the contents in your platform. This is vital when complications arise.

Dean Asher is a former copywriter with MBS. Though he no longer writes for us, he is still proud of having helped this blog continue to evolve as an industry-leading resource of news and original content.

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